Dorothy Parker always had an unkind word for everyone. Her friend George S. Kaufman was no exception—especially after he won two Pulitzers, made the cover of Time in 1939, and had two hits running concurrently on Broadway. "So much kudos for so little talent," she had once noted in a review of the plays Kaufman had written with Moss Hart.

The playwright apparently never got wind of it, since he subsequently invited "Dottie" and her friend Lillian Hellman for a weekend with other guests at his Bucks County summer home. Over the weekend, though, Parker received a phone call from a friend warning her that her put-down would be quoted in that Sunday's New York Times Book Review. Panicked, Parker and Heilman devised a plan: get up early the next morning, retrieve the Book Review, and leave a note that they were going for a long walk. Perhaps they would be lucky; perhaps it would be assumed that the Book Review had been omitted inadvertently.

Returning from their walk, they found Kaufman engrossed in a bridge game. With no apparent change in Beatrice Kaufman's warm hospitality, they rushed to pack while escape seemed still possible. Creeping downstairs, they thanked their hostess for a lovely time and asked her to say their good-byes to George so as not to interrupt his card game. That game, however, had already been interrupted by a phone call from Moss Hart. George glanced at the two women sneaking out, put down his cards, and, with a great pretense of innocence, called out, "Dottie, did you take the real-estate section?"